Rotor-Flying Manipulator: Modeling, Analysis, and Control

 Equipping multijoint manipulators on a mobile robot is a typical redesign scheme to make the latter be able to actively influence the surroundings and has been extensively used for many ground robots, underwater robots, and space robotic systems. However, the rotor-flying robot (RFR) is difficult to be made such redesign. This is mainly because the motion of the manipulator will bring heavy coupling between itself and the RFR system, which makes the system model highly complicated and the controller design difficult. Thus, in this paper, the modeling, analysis, and control of the combined system, called rotor-flying multijoint manipulator (RF-MJM), are conducted. Firstly, the detailed dynamics model is constructed and analyzed. Subsequently, a full-state feedback linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller is designed through obtaining linearized model near steady state. Finally, simulations are conducted and the results are analyzed to show the basic control performance.